A profound meditation on a problem many of us will face; worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Atul Gawande’s...
Doctors labor to cure disease and (recently) comfort the dying, but this moving memoir portrays a doctor practicing a new specialty that fills a gap between the two approaches.
Puri (Clinical Medicine/Univ. of Southern California), the medical director of palliative medicine at the Keck Hospital of USC and the USC Norris Cancer Hospital, hits the ground running with an impressive debut. The daughter of workaholic, immigrant physician parents who assumed she would follow in their footsteps, she acquiesced and dove into the field. During training, she thrilled to see her skills cure disease and relieve suffering, but she became increasingly disturbed when they didn’t. Repeatedly, she witnessed patients with devastating illnesses and little hope of cure made sicker by treatments the doctors themselves knew were futile. Patients and families usually encouraged this, in the belief that one must always “fight” disease; to do otherwise is to “give up.” Using often heart-rending examples, the author emphasizes that the best treatment of advanced cancer may not be more toxic chemotherapy. A victim of end-stage lung disease grows familiar with a respirator, but ultimately the lungs will fail to recover enough to breathe without it. Many patients live years bedridden with a respirator, their family praying for a miracle. A better alternative is to discuss what is happening and plan for a future where matters might not go as everyone hopes. Doctors hate doing this, so they discuss pros and cons, allowing the patient or family to choose. Thus, hearing that a treatment for metastatic breast cancer might prolong life for several months but also cause misery and harm, people usually choose treatment under the mistaken belief that treatment means “cure” and no treatment means abandonment. Called to assist, Puri recounts many painful exchanges, which, when successful, allow patients and those who love them to embrace a deeper understanding of their mortality.
A profound meditation on a problem many of us will face; worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal (2014).Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2331-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
